Tag Archives: builders

“A major housing shortage exists in this country,” Yun said in a statement. “It is therefore disappointing to witness in March the continued lackluster performance in new-home building, which was the second lowest activity over the past six months. Home prices have risen by 41 percent and rents have climbed 17 percent over the past five years at a time when the typical worker wage has grown by only 11 percent. To relieve housing costs, there simply needs to be more homes built.”

My first thought on this reading this: builders and developers are still skittish from the 2000s housing bubble. Instead of risking overextending themselves, compared to the past they are now focusing on more expensive homes or rental properties. Oddly though, I have seen little media coverage regarding builders and developers. They may be a secretive bunch generally but why isn’t there more scrutiny of their actions and motivations?

My second thought: if there is indeed a housing shortage, what does this say about the state of the economy? A booming construction sector is often related to a good economy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way in the future, particularly if there is a shift away from sprawl and homeownership of detached single-family homes, even if it was true in the post-World War II era.

Finally, who might be held responsible if there is indeed a housing shortage? It is hard to rally potential homebuyers into a cohesive group. Is there a way to prod politicians and business leaders to act and if so, could their actions even effect much change?

Reversing years of ballooning home sizes aimed at upper-bracket buyers, builders have begun refocusing their efforts on entry-level and more modest-sized homes. According to new data from the National Association of Home Builders, the median floor area in new-home starts dropped during the second quarter of this year by about 3 percent.

Meanwhile, townhouse construction has been increasing fast — up 25 percent over the past year as of the second quarter. New townhouses, which typically are smaller and cost less than detached single-family homes, now account for 13 percent of all single-family starts, the highest it’s been since 2008.

NAHB chief economist Rob Dietz told me the quarterly decline is no fluke and the trend is likely to persist. “What you’re seeing is the beginning of builders trying to expand the market” and pull in first-time and other buyers who are frustrated by the lack of affordable alternatives in the resale arena, he said. Many shoppers, especially those with or planning on children, now find growing opportunities in townhouse and entry-level detached-home communities in the suburbs and exurbs compared with closer-in, higher-cost homes.

Critics of McMansions as well as advocates for affordable housing have been asking for years why builders have been focusing so much of their efforts on larger homes. The short answer: such homes can generate a lot of profit while building smaller homes lead to less profit per unit. Yet, this article also suggests that demand has increased for smaller homes as entry-level buyers haven’t been able to find much thus far.

One point to note: even as builders and buyers are looking for smaller spaces, I suspect builders will do what they can to raise the values/prices of these units. Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean that much cheaper once numerous features are added and locations are considered. This doesn’t necessarily mean that builders are going to be constructing bare bones, cheap units – unless they are significantly farther away from city centers and job centers.

The Campanelli Brothers of Braintree, Massachusetts, were one of these typical merchant builders. When Michael, Joseph, Nicholas, and Alfred Campanelli created a construction company in the late 1940s, they were young and inexperienced. Their parents, Francesco Campanelli and Lisa Marie Colondono Campanelli, arrived in the U.S. in 1915 from a tiny and ancient mountain village in the Italian Apennines; they settled in an immigrant neighborhood in the small city of Brockton. The boys were used to hard work, quitting school after their father died to help support the family by working at the Quincy shipyards near Weymouth. Joseph also worked on some house construction sites before World War II. The three younger brothers served short stints in the Navy during the war.

After they came home, the brothers used an army surplus truck to move gravel to big construction sites, including Logan Airport. Soon they began pouring concrete footings for new buildings. As their assets increased, they built two new houses in Brockton, one for their mother and one for their sister Ann, whose husband, Salvatore De Marco, now joined the brothers’ team. They branched out to small developments near Braintree, Massachusetts, and Warwick, Rhode Island. Success there led them to develop more ambitious subdivisions in Natick, Framingham, Peabody, and other areas near Boston. In the process, they assembled a sizable group of foremen and loyal subcontractors, many drawn from their old neighborhood and earlier shipbuilding work. Their firm rapidly grew into the leading home building enterprise in the Boston area, and later built extensively in Florida and Illinois as well.

The typical Campanelli house was attractive because, as one buyer explained it, it was “a new kind of house” for “a new time.” It discarded the old-fashioned, larger, more monumental look. It had a low-pitched roof, like contemporary ranch houses in California, but still kept shutters or an occasional bow window for a faintly “colonial” flavor. Campanelli houses usually had two or three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen large enough to eat in, and a garage. The three-bedroom version was about 1,000 square feet of living space. In the mid-’50s, the firm extended the kitchens to form a “living kitchen” or a kind of a “family room.”

Campanelli Companies built more than 30,000 single-family homes in eight states during the post-war period.

Here is the company – Campanelli – today and how they describe themselves:

Campanelli is a vertically integrated commercial real estate, construction, development and acquisitions company with over six decades of successful experience having developed, built and acquired over 20 million square feet of property. Campanelli has a trustworthy, successful and experienced team that maximizes value, consistently executes on target objectives and provides operational excellence for your company.

I would love to see a study that compares the (1) home styles (2) buyers (3) interactions with local governments and (4) organizational operations of a number of post-World War II builders. Campanelli started small and became a commercial property developer. Though there are differences, it kind of reminds me of the Harold Moser story in Naperville where a former newspaper owner turned lumber store operator started by building a few homes and then ended up constructing a sizable amount of the large city’s homes.

Additionally, are such family business stories like this still possible today or did the combination of unusual housing needs plus innovations in building create a uniquely open market?

Stumped on what to do about buyers who are looking for a home that comes with a tiny price but a McMansion look and feel? Enter stage right: the jewel box home.

Ranging between 650-2,500 square feet, these are a win for buyers who want something custom but affordable, but they’re also an ideal product for builders looking to diversify and sell a higher-end product across multiple demographics…

It’s just a smaller-than-average single-family home — not a starter home or a tiny house — built with high-quality materials, exquisite detailing and custom finishes with an emphasis on tailoring the home to the owners’ way of life for maximum elegance, harmony and function…

Another key advantage to building jewel box homes: They’re ideal for high-density areas. In some of Weremeichik’s planned communities, he has reached densities up to 9-11 dwelling units per acre.

I suspect this may be a way for builders to avoid the ignominy of constructing oversized single-family homes: they can build (1) homes with all sorts of nice touches that still command high prices and (2) fit even more of these smaller homes onto parcels of land. Of course, there is also the matter of providing the sorts of homes that at least some in the housing market desire. However, are the profits to be made in these smaller homes enough to outweigh what could be made in larger homes or other development projects?

The directors of the city’s planning and permitting departments estimate it would take $400,000 to hire temporary workers and pay for overtime to eliminate the current backlog in the next 90 days…

Next year the department plans to ask for $1.6 million in additional money to fund 11 new positions. This memo comes as the city is just launching its annual budget process. Over the next few weeks, every department is going to be compiling a budget wish list, which eventually is sent to the City Council…

Some of the blame for the three-week delay in residential planning and permitting was placed on the “complexity” of the city’s McMansion ordinance, which limits housing sizes in certain neighborhoods. “As such the department will recommend changes to the (land development code) that will simplify the McMansion provisions and will extend turnaround times for those types of reviews to ensure that there is sufficient time to perform a thorough review,” the memo states.

The planning and permitting departments, which used to be one department called Planning and Development Review, are responsible for approving all real estate development in the city, from housing remodels to new subdivisions.

It can take some time to see how ordinances actually play out and perhaps the initial ordinance can be “smoothed out” for this sort of process. Communities can also run into this problem if they have high rates of growth. Austin is a desirable place for construction so it may make sense that it has a lot of permits to deal with.

I wonder how much these decisions to speed up the permitting process are driven by builders and developers who generally want to move as quickly as possible. If there is a bit of a delay in the process, would these builders actually cancel their projects or go elsewhere? Builders and developers are often powerful and are viewed as important harbingers of economic growth. Yet, isn’t Austin so desirable that a delay won’t harm things much? Granted, lots of people might want more efficient government but that also may just require more government employees.

The market for new “starter homes” is drying up, mostly on the supply side. As credit markets recover, there are more and more people who could be buying their first homes … if only builders could build them. But for a host of reasons, they can’t:

Materials costs have risen.

They lost a lot of their labor force during the economic downturn.

Communities entitled large lots during the boom, and now they won’t zone them for smaller parcels.

Cash-strapped local governments have raised permitting and other fees.

Building codes and other requirements make it harder to build cheap.

This makes it extremely difficult to build a house for less than $200,000 in many places, which is a hefty multiple of local median incomes.

Three quick responses:

1. I know this doesn’t get much discussion in many industries but when they say it is difficult to build for less than $200k, what exactly does this mean? A home at that price won’t meet their profit goals? What kinds of profits do developers and builders make at the lower end of the housing market as opposed to the higher end? Builders can’t make any money off new started homes or they can’t make enough money for them to see it as worth their time?

2. As noted, communities have some influence on this process. How many are really willing to zone for starter homes and/or have different guidelines for starter homes?

3. Isn’t this an opportunity to construct homes more efficiently? It sounds like there is some turmoil in costs – material, more uncertain labor, higher fees and requirements – but this is where the housing industry could find some new solutions.

Sales of existing homes were on the upswing in February, climbing 1.2 percent from January and 4.7 percent from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The tactics of builders and developers have changed:

The result is that buyers are seeing new houses of smaller square footage loaded with amenities such as wood floors, high-end appliances, specialty cabinets, spa-quality bathrooms, upscale windows and trims, and the latest wireless communication and entertainment technology.

Two groups of buyers are driving this trend: older millennials tired of paying rising rents and ready to raise a family, and baby boomers at or near retirement and looking to downsize…

Like other developers, Pulte is focusing on building in closer-in suburbs rather than massive subdivisions on the fringes…

Toll Brothers also has a limit on how far out it will develop, said Keith Anderson, Midwest group president.

“Elgin is as far as we will go. We’d rather pay more for the land and build closer,” Anderson said.

Or, put differently, there are not enough buyers and sellers putting pressure on builders and developers to construct homes further in the hinterlands in the Chicago region. In contrast, those buying homes have different expectations as well as the means to purchase more in-fill properties. This provides more evidence – from the higher economic end of suburban homeowners – that the bifurcated housing market continues.